This section introduces aspects that may be helpful in facilitating a better understanding of the invention(s). Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
Demands for higher data rates for mobile services are steadily increasing. At the same time modern mobile communication systems as 3rd Generation systems (3G) and 4th Generation systems (4G) provide enhanced technologies, which enable higher spectral efficiencies and allow for higher data rates and cell capacities. The demands are growing for both directions of transmission, in the DownLink (DL) for transmission from the network infrastructure to a mobile transceiver, as well as in the UpLink (UL) for transmission from a mobile transceiver to the network infrastructure.
The introduction of smartphone applications may lead to network usage patterns, which might not be reflected in the design of current wireless broadband networks, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). In current 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization a strategic areas is “System capacity and stability” among other areas such as WIreless FIdelity (WIFI) integration and new business opportunities by critical communications and public safety. A prominent issue is the proliferation of applications relying on push services, i.e. instant notifications, when e.g. new e-mails have arrived, when breaking news occur, when SoftWare (SW) updates became available, when weather conditions changed, when a new Instant Message (IM) arrived, etc.
The canonical technique to implement such notification services is by the use of persistent connections between the respective Application (App) and a corresponding application server, e.g. an e-mail App connected to an e-mail server, a news App connected to a news server, a weather App connected to a weather info server, App store, an Instant Messenger (IM) App, etc. Many of those cases use Transport Control Protocol (TCP) connections. However the sheer number of all these persistent, idling TCP connections between the millions of smartphones and the tens of applications on each smartphone may represent a high load for the networks, which might not have been expected when designing LTE, for example. In the fixed Internet the traffic this background ‘signaling’ traffic may be acceptable. The high number of bearers and the very high (signaling) load caused by idling TCP connections for notification purposes generates an extreme signaling overhead in wireless networks potentially leading to overload and service disruption situations.
Document S2-131499 of 3GPP System Architecture (SA) Working Group 2 (WG2) Meeting #96, San Diego, U.S.A., Apr. 8-12, 2013, discloses a concept for keeping an always-on connection by holding Packet Data Protocol (PDP) context and the public Internet Protocol (IP) address/port binding in the Network Address Translation (NAT) in a network. In this way, the application might not need to send heartbeats any longer. Document 3GPP Technical Report (TR) 23.887 V1.1.0, 2013-07, Technical Specification Group Services and System Aspects; Machine-Type and other Mobile Data Applications Communications Enhancements, (Release 12), studies and evaluates architectural enhancements for machine type and other mobile data applications communications.